Apex Legends Generated More Live Twitch Viewership than Fortnite in February

Apex Legends was released on February 4 and has been at the forefront of the games business ever since. Our Game Streaming Tracker shows that in the game’s release month, it was the #1 game on Twitch (by total live hours watched), knocking Fortnite from the top spot for the first time in a year. In fact, Apex was viewed live on Twitch for an impressive 122.1 million hours in February, compared to Fortnite’s 82.76 million hours.

In this article, we will use our Game Streaming Tracker to dive into Apex’s continued strong performance on Twitch, including the viewership of its first official esports competition. We will finish with a look at February’s top Twitch and YouTube titles by live hours watched.

Apex Shoots to the #1 Spot on Twitch in Its Launch Month

For the first time in Twitch history, a surprise release has shot to the top of the platform’s monthly live viewership ranking, outperforming some of the biggest titles in gaming.

Top streamer Shroud produced over 10% of Apex’s live viewership on Twitch, with 14.0 million hours. Learn more about Apex’s streamer-first approach in this article.

Impressively, the game had an average Twitch viewer count of 210K at any given time in February.

Apex’s Viewership is High but Stabilizing

While Apex’s overall viewership was higher than Fortnite’s in February, Apex’s daily viewership is decreasing. Although, this stabilization is expected.

The game’s initial strong performance was bolstered by the hype and virality of a surprise release, with top streamers helping spread the word. Since then, the hype has been dying down somewhat.

Apex was viewed live for 6.3 million hours on Feb 5, rising to 8.1 million hours on Feb 12. Viewership began stabilizing after this point, dropping to 5.2 million hours on Feb 19 and 3.6 million hours on February 26.

As you can see in the below graph, Fortnite’s viewership is far more stable; although, there was a spike toward the end of the month, thanks to Season 8’s February 28 release.

Apex’s launch month cannot be directly compared to Fortnite’s launch, as the latter game’s rise to popularity was more gradual, taking place across several months.

This data is readily available in Newzoo’s Game Streaming Tracker, for any game. The service allows publishers to directly compare the live viewership of their titles against the competition—all at a few clicks of a mouse.

We expect to see Apex’s viewership spike in March, when the title’s highly anticipated Battle Pass is planned for release.

Streamers Drive Apex Esports Viewership

The Twitch Rivals Apex Legends tournament, held on Feb 12 and Feb 19, also helped viewership remain high throughout the month. In addition to the official Twitch Rivals channel, the competing streamers also broadcasted the event from their own channels.

The competition generated 4.6 million hours of viewership. The majority of this (85.1%) came from the streamers’ channels.

The first day of the competition (Feb 12) pulled in 3.7 million hours of live viewership on Twitch. Shroud accounted for 880K hours, while the official Twitch Rivals channel generated 449K.

The competition’s second day (Feb 19), however, did not perform as well. It produced 887K live viewership hours overall, with 237K coming from the official Twitch Rivals channel. XQcOW was the streamer who produced the most live viewership for the event (73K hours).

This decrease in viewership is down to the participating streamers. Some of Twitch’s biggest names, including Shroud, DrDisrespect, and Ninja, participated in day one of the competition, bolstering the reach of the event through their streams.

Day two, on the other hand, mainly featured lesser-known streamers. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it is a risky strategy for an esports scene to rely on a few key players/streamers. Apex Legends is hedging its bets, so to speak—another example of the game’s well-orchestrated launch and roadmap.

Most Watched Games by Total Live Hours: Apex Legends Disrupts Twitch Ranking

Apexs Legends’ #1 debut caused plenty of movement in our February ranking for Twitch’s most viewed games (by total live hours).

League of Legends was the only game in the Twitch top 10 to retain its ranking from January, coming in at #2.

Fortnite dropped two spots to #3 on the Twitch ranking, despite Season 8 launching at on February 28.

Meanwhile, Overwatch jumped one position on Twitch to #7. A large update was released for the game in February, which included a new playable character.

PUBG fell three places on the Twitch ranking to #8, mostly due to increased competition from Apex in the battle royale-streaming space.

Looking at the YouTube ranking for February, PUBG Mobile climbed a spot to #2. Impressively, this means the mobile title had more live viewership than regular PUBG, which dropped two positions to #4.

Mobile games were again generally well-represented on the YouTube ranking, with Garena Free Fire taking the #6 spot and Arena of Valor re-entering the top 10 at #9. What’s more, mobile shooter Standoff 2 is a new addition to February’s YouTube ranking, rounding it off at #10.

Newzoo’s Game Streaming Tracker

Looking to explore Apex Legends’ performance on Twitch and YouTube yourself? Or compare its performance against your game? Newzoo’s Game Streaming Tracker offers instant insights on the world’s most viewed games, top streamers, and esports franchises.

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